We’ve ticked most Asian countries off our travel wish list but have never made it to the Philippines. We know a BIT about the food there but in general we’re kinda sketchy… we understand that Spanish, Chinese, Malay, and American are culinary influences… that rice is a staple… that pork is big… that there’s a tonne of coast so there must be fish… and there many different parts and islands so regionality has to be a feature. That’s about the extent of it and yes, we know. We need to get a bit more schooled. In the meantime, we made adobo, which is virtually the Filipino national dish, to try and plug into those happy Pinoy vibes. Made using either…

When you’re committed to serving a whole side of salmon (which looks spectacular), the process can be nerve wracking. Overcooked salmon? No-one likes that. And if you’re going the traditional hot-baked route there’s very little margin for error; fish can go from delectable to disastrous in minutes flat. NO PRESSURE! Enter this more chillaxed way to cook a big lump of gorgeous, pink fish – the slow roast. Or more correctly, the ‘low’ roast as 20-ish minutes in the oven barely qualifies as ‘slow’. But it’s all relative…

Rise and shine, breakfast freaks. We love our carbs and caffeine in the morning, and when it’s time to flip the script on the usual toast and jam, fluffy pancakes are pretty hard to beat. We like to kid ourselves these ones are a bit healthier than regular pancakes with their buckwheat flour, cottage cheese, buttermilk and the banana topping but honestly, who cares and who’s counting macros that early in the day? Not us, that’s for sure…

It had to happen sooner or later; cabbage has officially entered the zeitgeist. Remember when cauliflower was suddenly a thing? Then Brussel’s sprouts? No? Well they were and now it’s cabbage’s turn to have a little moment. Cabbage is suddenly all the rage and appearing in totally new guises; roasted, grilled, marinated, you name it. Some chefs are even claiming it’s ‘the new steak’. (No it bloody isn’t. We wonder what kind of steak these chefs have been eating). But we do agree it’s a pretty remarkable veg…

Soon, we pinky swear, we’ll do a deep dive into Korean ingredients because we realise not everyone is fluent. And Korean food has become SO popular that you might want to whip up a few dishes at home. If you don’t know your gochujang from your gochugaru you can still easily make this recipe but you will need to get your hands on both. Just bee-line to a decent Asian food store to get yourself set, although you’ll probs find gochujang at the supermarket. It’s a delightfully lush, gluggy, sticky-sweet chilli paste; gochugaru is a chilli powder that’s milder and slightly smokier than bog standard. You can’t really use substitutes for either…

Got a crowd to feed? Here’s your gig. We figure it’s not worth cooking up this style of a long-braised beefy storm for the average nuclear family but if 2.7 diners is all you’re mustering, just halve everything and be prepared for leftovers. No biggie. The cooked meat will freeze. TBH we don’t think our butcher heard us when we said ‘give us about a kilo of your finest beef chuck, please’. It just goes to show that one man’s ‘about a kilo’ is another person’s ’absolute s%#$-ton’ and once we hauled what felt like half a freaking cow home, we figured we may as well make a cracking big batch of kai…

What if you could make a cake without the hassle of finding the exact right cake tin?? 'Spring form’ this… ‘bundt tin’ that… ‘square pan’ the other… pfftt. Sometimes it’s all too hard. At least it is in SOMEONE’S house, where the corner kitchen cupboard is the dark, cluttered place where baking gear goes to die. Removable bases go AWOL in there and entire loaf pans vaporise, we swear. It’s so frustrating when you’ve eyed up a particular cake, loaf or slice recipe and you don’t have quite the right tin for the job. Using one that’s too large results in a thin, miserly-looking and possibly over-cooked cake – using one that’s even a smidge too small means cake innards oozing and encrusting themselves all over your oven while the thing is trying to cook. Here’s our fix: use a frying pan…

What’s cuter than a cupcake? A cupcake with a great gob of frosting piped on the top, that’s what. Anything with piping looks bougie, don’t you think? We love letting loose with a piping bag; it’s our happy place. And it’s arguably the most extra thing you can do because, unless it’s their birthday, no-one ever sees piping coming and those whorls of creamy stuff forced through a star-shaped nozzle always feel super-spesh. Maybe our admiration for piping dates back to our shared rural kiwi roots, when shindigs at the local hall were fuelled by the best…

We bought you double-crumbed chicken, now we’re bringing you double-trouble pumpkin pasta! There’s nothing tricksy about this recipe; a smooth pumpkin sauce coats the pasta, with golden roasty bits of pumpkin for scattering over the top before you serve. Or to toss through the whole thing if you like a more integrated approach. You don’t have to do the double-pumpkin manoeuvre (just leave the roasting step out) but it’s a nice touch that adds extra interest to this vego dish and anyway. How good is well-roasted pumpkin?…

Ah, Thailand. We l-o-v-e it. The bustle. The full-throttled craziness of its cities, especially Bangkok. The charm of the people and the allure of the culture; we’re big into those. And SHOPPING!! We love the retail action; those markets are unreal (how good is Chatuchak?) – and yes, we’re even partial to a glitzy mall or three. But we mostly adore the food, with its punch-you-in-the-face fresh, zingy, spicy flavours…

Oh. Don’t like lentils? You’re missing out. They’re seriously delicious and are an easy, healthy and cheap way to get filled up. Until you start pairing them with eggs of course, and then everything goes to heck in the budgeting department. Still, a half dozen eggs are cheaper than most hunks of meat, so there’s that. And maybe you have some girls laying in your yard, or the neighbour does and they give you their surplus. (If so, can we have your neighbour? All we ever exchange with ours are pleasantries, and a few bits of home-raised produce’d be ever so much pleasant-er)…

Like having a Little Black Dress in your wardrobe, every baking repertoire needs an easy, gingery, spicy cake recipe in the mix. (Well, we think it does anyway, and what we say generally goes. We’re not running a benevolent dictatorship here). A spice cake is lovely when the weather turns a bit crisper; those flavours are warming, comforting and generally ones that everyone loves. And they’re killer with a cup of tea or coffee for breakfast; take our word on this…

We’re doing our best to slip in as many vibrant veggie-based dishes as we can before the dark days of winter set in. Not that we have anything against braises, pies, soups, root veggies and all that comfort food you generally hoover through in winter. (Did someone say ‘roasted kūmara’?) But we miss the long, bright, balmy days of summer once they’re gone and kid ourselves we can manifest sunny vibes by cooking bright-flavoured dishes with loose roots in the Mediterranean. Where, in our fantasies, the skies are always blue, the people are always pretty, and the food helps you live as long as the average Galapagos tortoise…

We ask All The Questions around here. Such as, ‘what’s better than crumbed chicken?’ Parmesan-crumbed chicken, duh! And, ‘what's’ better than parmesan-crumbed chicken?’ DOUBLE parmesan-crumbed chicken, of course. That’s right. You don’t just crumb your tenders once in this recipe, you crumb them twice and because we know you’re full of questions too, we hear you saying ‘yeah, but why’? Fair call. Well, by double-crumbing, you…

Loads of cuisines have their take on a fish cake; in Thailand they're called tod mun pla and are infused with red curry paste; in Malaysia they’re called otak otak and involve grinding fish to a paste with coconut milk and spices, wrapping in banana leaves, then grilling. Delish. Turks make balik köfte with minced fish, onions, herbs, and spices, typically these are shaped into small patties and fried. Indian ‘fish cutlets’ are made with mashed fish, potatoes, spices and herbs and coated in breadcrumbs before frying. Norwegian fiskibollur are balls of finely minced fish, onion, flour and egg, simmered in a white sauce...

“Experts Resoundingly Say a No-Sugar Diet is No Good” ** declared an article headline we read over breakfast the other day, as we shoveled jam-mounded refined carbs and syrupy coffee down our throats with abandon. The news played to our sugar-loving confirmation bias and isn’t that a lesson for the ages? We’re almost sure we could work this concept into a slogan, grab our megaphones and start a cranky 'Make Sugar Great Again’ counter culture. Wanna buy a hat? Sneakers?…

When you crave a curry, nothing else will do. But, you know. Making a ‘proper’ curry, whether Indian or South East Asian, involves loads of ingredients and making a paste from scratch. (Except a Japanese curry, where you just throw a few of those curry roux thingos at your dish, then watch them melt and release palm oil, flour, sugar, salt, cornstarch, caramel, colour, monosodium glutamate, defatted soybean, cheese seasoning, autolyzed yeast extract, roasted onion powder, honey, soy lecithin, sesame paste, brown roux AND OTHER ASSORTED SHIT, thickening to a viscous glistening gloop in the process. As you can probably tell, this is not our Spirit Animal)…

There’s a certain kind of tyranny baked into a recipe. “Cut that this big. Weigh those precisely. Use this sized pot. Cook for exactly this amount of time. No, DON’T stir yet. OK, stir NOW. And put a lid on that, would you?” …

In a world filled with ready-made pastes, jars of pre-mulched garlic and citrus juices in squeezy bottles (do not use these! They’re pasteurised, contain preservatives, and taste like rubbish), sometimes it’s nice to grab a whole pile of aromatic fresh stuff and chop, squeeze, grate and shred the living daylights out of it just for the mess it creates. And for the way those lovely, spiky, sweet-sour Asian flavours taste. Not that we’re averse to cracking open a darn good purchased curry paste when time is short. We’re SO not. But if you like to unwind over a chopping board, and work your angst out on a pile of unsuspecting fresh ingredients, then here’s a dish for you. We find something meditative in the process of finely hand-chopping ingredients but if you don’t want to go that route, just give the turmeric, ginger, garlic, lemongrass, and palm sugar a rough chop, then shove them in the food processor with the fish sauce, lime juice and pepper. Blitz away! OR, take a hybrid approach and finely grate what you can using a microplane, then hand-chop the rest. Whatever gets you there. 

Bloody autocorrect. Ours has a field day with ingredient names we’d think it should jolly well know better. We’ve ‘butthurt’ our corn when it should have been buttered. We added ‘shitpotle’ not chipotle to our chilli, although this one was arguably more of a straight typo. Our breasts got ‘plugged’ instead of glugged with sweet soy. Our turkey has been slathered in ‘Greece’ (oops), our strawberries ‘masturbated’, not macerated (naughty!), and our beef salad got ‘freaked’, rather than tossed with freekeh. Sigh. The struggle is real!…